Meantime, her muscular frenzy ended, Lyla had risen to a sitting position without using her hands, eyes still very wide and focused on nothing. She crossed her legs, turned by scuffling with her toes against the mat so that she was facing the audience, and placed her palms tobefore her face in a sketch for the Indian gesture of namasthi.
There was a pause. Eventually Ariadne said, speaking directly to Dan in a near-whisper but with her head close enough to a wall pickup for Reedeth to catch the words, “Do we have to ask questions now?”
“You have to with some pythonesses,” Dan responded equally softly. “Not with Lyla, though. I told you when you hired her: this girl is very damned good.”
Regardless of what she might now say, Reedeth had made his mind up about one thing already. Lyla Clay must be one of the most amazing people in the world, capable of a feat he had never even dreamed of. If what the desketary had said about sibyl-pills was true, she ought not now to be able to even sit up straight. She ought to be in raving delirium.
Tension mounted. The moment before it became unLyla said in a high clear voice like a child’s, “Mother Superior couldn’t be drearier! Life is oppresand lonely and dun! Little Miss Celia envied Ophelia-Hamlet ignored her and then there was none! Rat-ta-ta-ta, rat-ta-ta-ta, rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. Penny a look, gobbledegook, you can’t live the life that you read in a book. Pouncing and bouncing hear what I’m an-it’s true and you’ll never hide from it. You may think you’re knowing in coming and going but you can’t take the ‘come’ out of ‘comet.’ As I was going down the drains I met a man with seven brains. Every brain had seven lives, every life had seven wives, every wife told seven lies, who will win the liars’ prize?”
She hesitated. Seizing the chance to take a look at the audience, Reedeth noticed that apart from Dan, who seemed rather pleased, everyone in the room wore a baffled frown.
“As I was-” Lyla resumed, and checked. “No. Back in-No. As I was rolling round the sphere I met a man who isn’t here. As I was going down the stair I met a man who’s everywhere. Hrr-hum. Back in-”
Once more she interrupted herself, and a shadow of worry crossed Dan’s face. Her voice grew louder and rather frightened.
“As I was sitting on the floor I met a man who’s much much more! As I was lying on my bed I kissed a man who wasn’t dead! As I was crying out aloud I met a man who’s not allowed! As I was-as I was.”
Her mouth worked, her hands folded and unfolded in naked terror, and she tried to hop across the soft mat frog-fashion, eyes rolling wildly in search of escape from some unimaginable predicament. Reedeth was half out of his chair. Something must be done about this-the sight of the poor girl’s panic was intolerable!
But before he could do anything, Dan had shut off his recorder with an angry gesture, closed the gap behimself and Lyla with a single long stride, and slapped her on both cheeks. As though miraculously called back from a million miles away, she became heragain and looked up at him docilely.
“Was it all right?” she said in her normal voice. “What did I say?”
At thirteen-seventeen the computer which maintained Flamen’s around-the-clock news monitoring service, ever alert for hints of corruption, maladministration, yielding to blackmail pressure or other juicy scandal, logged the announcement that a large group of X Patriots was demonstrating at Kennedy Airport against the by now 95-minute delay suffered by Morton Lenigo on his way through Customs and Immigration. Police were standing by with riot guns, gas and flamethrowers and Flights 1205, 1219 and 1300 were tentatively scheduled for diversion over the Canadian border.
At fourteen-thirty it logged an all stations from the South African Broederbond recommending that Lenigo be shot immediately and Detroit be taken out with a suitably sized nuke as necessary preliminaries to the impeachment of President Gaylord.
Fuming, Lionel Prior let himself through the elaborate series of barriers which guarded the entrance to his home. It would have been far better to fall in with Flamen’s suggestion and fly to the Ginsberg this afternoon, he told himself, regardless of how angry he had been at that bitter and unjustified gibe about selling out to the Holocosmic directorate. He’d have been spared one of the most embarrassing episodes of his entire life.